Having spent the best part of my professional life evaluating people and their job suitability, I can say with confidence that hiring mistakes are common. They are expensive to everyone concerned. There are common traps awaiting the person making the hiring decision. Here are four...
Introduction In two prior articles we challenged the assumption put forward by a LinkedIn author suggesting that it is incorrect to “pressure” applicants with challenging questions. Alternatively, another writer suggested using questions that are clearly not job related, and in some jurisdictions would probably be illegal. The...
The Challenge of Hiring Hiring the right person is a difficult exercise. The interviewer has to somehow penetrate the mask that the candidate will — quite properly — wear. They are there to get the job. They want to highlight their strengths and downplay their weaknesses. One...
Part 1: Is there a place for stressful questions in the interview? Linkedin offers a great service and (mostly) terrific advice for recruiters. Naturally, with different authors, we get different points of view. This article is written to comment on two sharply differing pieces of advice. Having...
How Much Stress to Add to the Hiring Interview: Part 2 In the first part of this article, we examined differing opinions from LinkedIn authors. One suggested avoiding putting pressure on candidates. The other suggested that this was appropriate, though we disagreed with some of their...
The Psychopath Every employer has an obligation to create a safe workplace. Would you employ someone who likes to set fires? There are some job candidates who are the equivalent of a psychological arsonist. But they’re hard to recognize. This is the first in a series of...
Intuition can help reveal the hidden character of the applicant. As a Corporate Psychologist for the last forty years, I have been asked by public safety agencies in the United States and Australia to assist in hiring frontline staff. These include police, firefighters, ambulance services, and...
Introduction Having been directly involved in thousands of hiring decisions, most organizations do only a mediocre job. This is despite hiring mistakes being one of the biggest costs to business. The most important task of any manager is to hire the right people. Your career success depends...
Introduction Some people look so much like the type of person we’re searching for, it’s easy to be fooled. There are some people who “look the part” so much, that it can be difficult to distinguish between someone of real substance, and the person who is...
Ok, everybody knows that you shouldn’t use leading questions when interviewing job applicants. It gives the applicant an unfair advantage. The leading question signals the type of answer that you, as the interviewer, is looking for. But, here’s the question: If everyone knows this, why does...